Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the area of consumer electronics, and more particularly, relates to techniques for advertising in a digital media playback system using structured metadata.
Description of Related Art
The advertisement industry penetrates every aspect of our life. Traditional advertising channels including newspapers, radio, and television offer variety of products that can be tailored to virtually any market and satisfy companies of any size. However, they can only provide static content and cannot engage potential customers interactively. Rapid growth of the Internet offers the advertisers a unique opportunity to make interactive advertisement campaigns possible by allowing end users to close the loop, namely inducing users to click on an advertisement being served or linking the users to the actual product or service being advertised.
Musical industry thrives by promoting new artists, albums, and individual songs and etc. Unlike advertising in TV or on the Internet where advertisements of services or products can be readily inserted as footage in a TV program or a clickable graphic banner, advertising in music programs is relatively difficult because it would be too sensible to insert an advertisement in the middle of music. Accordingly, most advertising in music programs take place between two musical pieces.
Publishers in musical industry supplement their revenue with advertising and connecting the audience with other products or services the audience may desire. Advertising only between two musical pieces may not get a close attention from a listener as the listener may switch to another piece of music when a previous one is over. Thus there is a need for solutions that allow advertising to happen anytime an advertiser may deem appropriate to get the attention from a listener.